Re: Just venting (totally OT)

Mandy <mandy2uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Rowland McDonnell) wrote:

Mandy <mandy2uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Rowland McDonnell) wrote:

Mandy <mandy2uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[snip]

Computers make me scream too - I really hate it when I use the
help on Microsoft products to find out how to do something and
it tells me to use an option on a non-existent menu.


Yup! This is a Jasc product (PaintShop Pro) with a plugin that
someone has made for PSP and it's that which isn't working! :o(

[snip]

There are alternatives to Microsoft and the whole Windoze thing,
you know.

Yup, but Windoze is the only OS I know how to use and my memory is so
bad that it's pointless even *trying* to learn something else! :o(

Another way to look at it is that your memory is so bad it's
irrelevant.

You'd find `not a lot of trouble' moving to a Mac from modern Windoze
- the current Mac UI is designed to match the expectations of Windoze
users, sort of thing (it's different in all sorts of ways, but it's
been tweaked to make it easy for people changing from Windoze). The
whole UI is much less confusing, so once you'd got the hang of it -
`what all the bits mean', sort of thing - you'd probably end up
finding it a lot less bother than Windoze. Honest.


I might give it a go if my memory improves then! :o) Where do you get
Macs from?

Apple. To be precise: the UK on-line Apple store.

I'd love to be able to say `Buy an X, Y, or Z'. I don't like
recommending one firm - but really, a Mac is the only choice for an even
faintly user-friendly computer these days.

I do hope the situation changes, but I hold out no hope.

The only places that I know sell computers sell Windows
machines and I haven't got a clue where to start looking for Macs!

Shops are not the place to buy computery stuff from any more. On-line,
direct from source is best. Why mess about with a middleman? You don't
gain from that at all - except in the case of buying an LCD monitor,
'cos that way you can check all the pixels are working before handing
over your cash.

[snip]

Yes, it really is like that. And if you did make the switch, you'd be
spared a lot of bother. Okay, bother with Macs exists, but there's
less of it.

What sort of problems do you get with Macs?

<shrug> Umm. I dunno really. Oh, let's see: corrupted mpeg files have
been known to make QuickTime die in a fashion that corrupts the part of
the OS that runs the user interface - so that you can have a Macintosh
functioning perfectly aside from completely ignoring everything that
it's told via the keyboard and mouse (although remote logins work still,
'cos everything except the user interface is working fine).

Not playing dodgy mpegs found via a P2P network is probably a good idea,
but just killing the SystemUIServer process sorts that one out before it
bites.

But I've not heard of anyone but me coming across *that* one - I have
this tendency to come across problems that no-one else has ever heard
of, while avoiding the ones that bite `normal' people.

Ah yes - software installers often get file permissions wrong, so any
sensible Mac user runs `Repair disc utilities' after every software
install, which can be a mild pain 'cos it takes time and it's as well to
leave it alone until it's finished.

Umm. The fancy typography controls don't work properly with either of
the Macs we have here, so you don't get to choose alternate glyphs in
founts that possess them. Different forms of the letter `capital Q' and
things like that. That would annoy the hell out of me if I used WPs or
similar, but I do all my text output using LaTeX and I get access to as
much fancy typography as anyone could need via XeTeX, so I'm not
bothered.

Caches can get corrupted, leading to all sorts of deviant intermittency.
But fixing such trouble is a simple matter of running any old repair
utility that can trash caches. The OS rebuilds them automatically - the
only downside is that the machine's a bit slower until the caches *are*
rebuilt. Well, I say `a bit slower' - last time I did it, I was
beginning to worry about something being seriously wrong when it
rebooted - took absolutely *AGES* to get to the login screen, such was
the speed up it gets from caching.

Basically, Mac problems tend to be minor niggles that you can deal with
with a simple `Zap' of the right maintenance tool - or by taking the
appropriate workaround step.

I suspect that the problem I've got with the fancy typography controls
is caused by dodgy founts that have been installed by something - I've
heard of another person with the same problem, and both our modern Macs
suffer from it and they've both got the same founts installed.

btw, I'd very much like to be able to suggest that you abandoned MS
and chose `A Mac, or a something else, or a third option'. The
problem is that there's only Macs or MS for the non-expert home user
these days - Apple is the only firm that survived MS's illegal actions
to wipe out its competition in the microcomputer marketplace.


I've just had a thought... everything I do on the computer only works on
Windows, not on a Mac :o(

I bet you're wrong - games aside. For sure you might have a few bits of
Windoze-only software, but unless you're doing integrated circuit design
or similar, there is Mac software that does the same but better. Well,
in almost all cases.

<shrug>

On the other hand, while I can't understand why people put up with the
crap of Windoze, I can understand why you'd not want to change. And
let's face it, changing would mean you spending a chunk of cash and then
a long time learning how to use a new computer, even longer sorting out
the software you'd need, and so on.

I'd be willing to bet a large sum of money that if you did so, your life
would be more relaxed. I'd bet almost as much that you'd consider the
effort not worth the bother and who am I to tell you that you're wrong
on that point?

<heh> Baroque chamber music is a much better bet for relaxation in any
case. Handel's trio sonatas are jolly good - in the recording I've got,
anyway (by L'Ecole d'Orphee - picked up second hand; I got lucky and
it's a damned fine performance recorded very well).

[snip]

The last time I used Windoze on a regular basis was in 1995, and
that was Win 3.11. It's *great* not having to put up with all that
crap - especially since it's got a lot worse since those days.

Yup, Windoze 3.11 is what I was taught on and I've been using Windoze
ever since!

I've never been taught to use computers (well, aside from a classroom
1/2hr intro to Macs once). I learnt. I learnt on a Nascom II and an
Apple ][ back in the late 70s. Then a ZX81 and a BBC Micro. Then
crappy MS-DOS came along, in all its 1970s glory (just what was needed
in the 80s, obviously). MS-DOS stank. Then MS Windoze 3 came along.
It stank too. I did once use MS Windoze 2 - it's just a sick joke.
I've seen screenshots and explanations of MS Windoze 1. It's a weak
sick joke designed by a sickly infant - not even worth noticing, and I
cannot imagine who would have tried to use it. You wouldn't believe
it to see it, I reckon.


*nodding* It doesn't sound like it!

I couldn't find the site I ran into once that showed the install and
boot up procedures and so on - but... Oh dear. Designed for five year
olds and `text based graphics' rather than proper graphics.

I've always loathed MS software - MS Basic was, back in the 8 bit days
before MS-DOS, raved about by USAians but largely sniggered at over
here because the non-MS dialects of Basic we had were all superior;
BBC Basic and Sinclair Basic were rather nice, actually. Especially
BBC Basic with proper structuring.


I had a Sinclair Spectrum when I was a kid to play games on and stuff

The only thing wrong with Speccys is that people thought they were
something fancier than a ZX81 with colour and a keyboard of a slightly
lower degree of awfulness. ZX81s are a classic home computer design
along with Spectrums as far as I'm concerned, but not everyone can quite
get 'em in perspective.

Anyway, Win 3 is crap, and Win 95 was designed to be unreliable by
design with the `fragile by design single point of failure' registry
file. It's a wonder that modern versions of Windoze run at all if you
ask me. Well, if you read what people write, you find out that
actually it never seems to work properly. All subsequent versions of
Windoze have suffered from the same problem.

XP and Vista are more stable thankfully... neither of them are perfect
but they are better than the early days!

And just you try and see what happens if you install (and then
uninstall) lots of different software. Oh, it's a nightmare. DLLs are
a design flaw with Windoze - there are, by the way, mechanisms for doing
`the same job as Windoze DLLs' on Macs, but it was designed properly so
you can't have the trouble you get with Windoze's way of doing it.
Which isn't to say you can't have any problems - DLLs are `chunks of
program that sit there available to all programs'. The problem comes
when DLLs to do the same job are installed in different places, perhaps
different versions of the same thing. Macs are organised so it's very,
very unlikely for that to happen. In fact, there's only one `DLL-type

My other half has Windoze at work - it's not so much that it keeps
crashing, but nothing really works quite right, at least not with any
reliability.

There are fundamental problems with Windoze that MS has been patching
for a while, but while the basic architecture is no longer seriously
flawed, MS has managed to bugger it up even so. Oh, it's just horrible,
horrible, horrible.

(the current basic architecture for Windoze is based on Windoze NT, and
that was based on concepts worked out for DEC minicomputers and was
damned fine as designed and originally implemented in the lab. But MS
managed to bugger up even that by the time it got to the public.)

[snip]

Rowland.

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